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To Be Or Not To Be That Is The Game

Afunny thing can happen in the dental office while you are waiting, particularly if your smartphone looses its marbles. You settle down, pick up an old magazine from the rack and travel back in time.

You observe a visage of Kim Kardashian with Kanye West to the east of her, and baby North still inside her, to the south of her navel. And you marvel at life’s miracles.

Seriously, there is a lot of accidental knowledge that comes to us directly from the old magazines on the coffee tables in dental offices.

My latest find is an old issue of the TIME Magazine, dated Thursday, Aug. 08, 2013. The article wasHello, Sweet Prince. Hamlet is reborn as a Choose Your Own Adventure, by Lev Grossman.

Much scholarly commentary has been expended on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, maybe more than on any other play in the English language, but I don’t think it’s ever been said of Hamlet that it would make a good Choose Your Own Adventure novel. Nevertheless: that was the pitch that a 32-year-old Canadian writer named Ryan North made last November on Kickstarter. North figured it would take about $20,000 to produce To Be or Not to Be: That Is the Adventure. The Internet disagreed. It gave him $580,905.

The Internet chose wisely… (– from the TIME Magazine article)

Teeth cleaned to gleaming shine, I found out that the book, To Be or Not To Be by Ryan North is being published already, to great accolades from everywhere.

To Be or Not To Beis a choose-your-own-path version of Hamletby New York Times best-selling author Ryan North. Play as Hamlet, Ophelia, or King Hamlet—if you want to die on the first page and play as a ghost. It’s pretty awesome! Readers can follow Yorick skull markers to stick closely to Shakespeare‘s plot, or go off-script and explore alternative possibilities filled with puzzles and humor. (-–Amazon)

Ialso checked the KICKSTARTER page, where Ryan North makes an excellent pitch of his book. The hyperlink To Be Or Not To Be: That Is The Adventurewill take you there. Below and on the KICKSTARTER page, you can indulge in viewing a promotional video, starring the author.

And no, I don’t have a book yet. Am I planning to travel Shakespearean landscape, following Yorick skull markers? I donno... Should you do it ahead of me — lemmeno.